Chapter 7 Ou Ma

"Mom, wake up!" An An opened her mother's closed eyelids with her fingers, like a coroner opening the eyelids of a dead person. Mom didn't get up as usual.She pulled up the quilt to cover her head, and the voice muffled from under the quilt: "Go, go! Go find Ou Ma, and ask Ou Ma to give you breakfast." Hua An also remembered that this was Ou's father and Ouma's home, and excitedly groped downstairs. Mom heard an old and cheerful voice from the kitchen downstairs: "Good morning, baby!" She hugged the quilt contentedly and went back to sleep, thanking her mother-in-law for giving her the right to stay in bed.

When the sleepy-eyed, disheveled mother came downstairs, breakfast was already on the table: cakes, bread, and butter baked by her mother-in-law, kept warm by a candle under the coffee pot.Mom said "Morning" and was about to sit down when she was startled by Ou Mama's yell: "My God! Little girl!" The mother-in-law shook her head: "How can you come down with bare feet, it will freeze you to death—" Mom put her feet up and put them on the corner of the chair. She poured coffee and said, "Okay! I can keep my feet from touching the ground, right?" The mother-in-law said, "Child, your head is cold and your feet are warm—"

"The head is cold and the feet are warm," mother sang in Ou Ma's voice, "to bankrupt the doctor! An old German proverb. Or is the head warm and the feet cold?" The old man shook his head helplessly.Dad Ou put his head in and said, "Old mother, come and see your grandson doing tricks!" Ou Ma put down the rag in her hand and rushed out excitedly. The mother sipped her coffee and took a close look at the yellowed photo: a curly-haired baby stood tremblingly leaning on the carriage. The baby had round cheeks and chubby little hands.That carriage was made by Papa Ou's neighbor's carpenter back then. Now he is standing in Hua An's room. Every time Hua An rides on it, he solemnly shakes his hand to his mother: "Mom, goodbye! An An has gone to work! Come and be sweet." .”

The blond baby next to the wooden horse is now lying in bed in the upstairs bedroom.Usually, he has to get up early in the morning and rush to the office around 8 o'clock to consider the political situation in the Middle East, study the economic trend of Germany, and predict the investment market for next year.This morning, he was lying on the bed, safe and secure, knowing that there was breakfast downstairs waiting for him to eat at any time.You can probably smell the strong aroma of coffee from upstairs.After all, this is my mother's home. The sound of chasing and laughing came from the living room.Mom hid the photo in her pocket.In the mother-in-law's book, there are scenes of Hua An's father's growth from birth to fourteen years old. The mother-in-law is unwilling to give the book to his daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law also understands her thoughts: Of course this man now belongs to you completely, you as a wife; but he The past belongs to me, to me as a mother.

"However, it doesn't matter if you only steal one?" Mom asked herself, thinking of the "An An's Book" that has been recorded for more than two years. Footprints and cries.One day, my mother will probably be gray-haired, and she will say to a young woman: Of course this man now belongs to you, you as a wife; but his past belongs to me as a mother. Or, the mother will turn it around and say: This man's past belongs to me as a mother; but now he belongs to you completely, you as a wife, go! Mom's eyes suddenly filled with tears; she was moved by her own tragedy, and a tear fell on the plate, which stood crystal clear next to the cake.The cake has several layers, one layer of chocolate, one layer of almonds, layered on top of each other, like a beautiful work of art.

How many tears did the cake baker, seventy-five-year-old woman shed? Mom finally forgot her own tragedy and self-pity for a while, she heard the "quack" sound of her mother-in-law making a duck and Hua An's uncontrollable laughter.Sixteen-year-old Maria, with big eyes and wearing a white sarong, stood under the apple tree, which was full of fine, fragrant apple blossoms in May.Maria was reading the letter under the tree, and the wind blew the fragrance of white apple blossoms onto the letter paper. He married the letter writer and gave birth to two boys. The boys chased and grew up among the scent of apple trees, cows, and leather, but Germany was heading towards destruction step by step.The child's father put on a military uniform, carried a gun on his back, kissed Maria, and embarked on a journey, which was just a stone road interspersed with green grass.

"This dress is for you," said the mother-in-law.It was a sheer tulle blouse embroidered with red lace.Mom looked at it carefully and felt that the patterns on the tulle were extremely beautiful. "Of course it's not new." The mother-in-law stroked the old lace and said flatly, "It was sent to me from the battlefields of the Soviet Union. I have kept it for forty years." Mom put the embroidered tulle shirt carefully into her drawer, feeling uncontrollably sad.This tulle was once firmly held in the hands of the German officer on the icy, cruel and dangerous foreign battlefield.Tenderly bound with rough hands, eagerly mailed, to Maria who used to read letters under the apple tree.

This officer died on the icy, cruel and dangerous foreign battlefield.He never went back under the apple tree. My mother never wore a tulle shirt from my mother-in-law.She can't bear it. Maria became a widow, but not many people shed tears for her, because there were widows everywhere among the crumbling walls and broken tiles.There are too many tragedies and too much catastrophe, but human tears are limited.The country is broken, what is the family? "Obviously, she is the one who pursued me!" Papa Ou said excitedly, "At that time, she was a widow with two oil bottles. If she didn't beg me desperately, how could I marry her?"

The mother-in-law smiled and coaxed a child and said, "Of course, all the women in the village want to marry you!" The person who came to the apple tree on the stone road was a stranger from the east; perhaps he was also tempted by the big eyes?He lived by the tree.In fact, foreigners can't go back to their hometown in the east. In a few years, the hometown in the east has become East Germany, the other side of the wall. "You're so old, mother," said the grown-up boy to Maria, "I'm afraid you'll have a wrinkled ugly thing!" The baby was born anyway.Even in the post-war depression, the cry of a baby is still exciting.The baptismal church is filled with blessings and prayers for the future.Of course no one mentioned that the baby would be married to a Taiwanese woman in China thirty years later.

"After giving birth to the third child, the eldest started to complain of dizziness and fatigue..." said the mother-in-law, "We are preparing to send him to college—he is such a bright child with a strong thirst for knowledge..." Maria stayed by the hospital bed for two years, watching her radiant son gradually shrinking, one by one, first put into a wheelchair, and then, one day, put into a coffin... "Why wasn't the polio vaccine discovered a year or two earlier?" Maria asked. "I looked at the baby in my arms, a child that was actually a man—watched him stop breathing..."

After eating breakfast, my mother washed the dishes and found that the three grandparents and grandchildren were out in the yard.She thought, Hua An's father is too outrageous, sleeping until this time.Aren't you going to take Hua An to swim? After swimming, mother put Hua An to sleep, and went downstairs to find Ou Ma. Ou Ma is ironing clothes.My mother found that all the dirty clothes that my family of three changed yesterday had been washed, dried, folded like dried tofu, and put aside.What my mother-in-law is ironing is my mother's underwear. "My God, Mudi," my mother said anxiously, "you, you, don't iron my clothes, okay? Anyway, I just—" Without raising her eyes, the mother-in-law evened out the sides of the panties carefully, and ironed them with an iron, saying, "I'm going to iron your clothes, of course you iron them too!" My mother wanted to say: "But underwear is worn inside and no one can see it, so why iron it?" But she didn't say anything, she knew her mother-in-law would say: "Hey, the inside and outside are the same! The underwear is hot, It's comfortable to wear and harmless!" When my mother returned to her guest room, she found that the two quilts that had been piled up on the bed had been folded into two pieces of dried tofu and placed neatly.She turned to her father and said: "How about locking this room when you go out tomorrow, lest the mother ladder come in to clean up the house again?" "No," said the son, lying on the dried tofu quilt, kicking off his shoes, "if she doesn't do things, mother will find life boring. Do you know that she is going to be a volunteer in the 'nursing home' tomorrow?" , to condolences to the 'old man'! I guess, she might still want to sing to those 'poor old man'!"